ONS4 Personal Well-Being Test — Free 4-Question Life Satisfaction Check

It suits moments when you want to sum up in just four numbers how satisfied you are with life lately, whether what you do feels worthwhile, and how happy and how anxious you were yesterday. Because it asks for an appraisal of life as a whole rather than symptoms, it is worth taking regularly even when nothing hurts, and it works well for before-and-after comparisons around big changes such as a new job, a move or a birth, or as a start- and end-of-year check.

The four questions are the "ONS4" that the UK Office for National Statistics has used to measure national well-being since 2011. Satisfaction and worthwhileness ask for an evaluation of life, while happiness and anxiety ask about emotional experience yesterday, so the four scores are read separately rather than summed. The app shows typical adult ranges from several countries alongside your scores, but since averages vary with culture and response habits, the measure is most useful for tracking your own change rather than as an absolute standard.

For satisfaction, worthwhileness and happiness, higher is better. Following the ONS thresholds, 0-4 is low, 5-6 medium, 7-8 high and 9-10 very high. Anxiety runs the other way, with lower being better: 0-1 very low, 2-3 low, 4-5 medium and 6-10 high. If all four scores are comfortably good, keeping your current rhythm and logging a score once a quarter is enough.

If satisfaction or worthwhileness is 0-4, try writing one sentence about what is missing; the life satisfaction test (SLS-8) can break down which areas are low. If yesterday's happiness was low and anxiety was 6 or above, it may reflect a single day's condition, so repeat the check a few days later, and if the pattern holds, use the PHQ-4 ultra-brief screen to check for symptoms. When low scores persist for weeks or daily life feels hard, talking with a counsellor is a good step.